Why oh why

... is there always a friggin' bitter pill to swallow? I wanna spit it out.

Why can' t I just pick my favourite happy, jelly beans.

Scheming

... for yet another project.



Now that we have the furniture pieces for the family room in place and the old sofa and loveseat have been moved and set-up in the loft, I am now ready to put some colours in the three rooms - kitchen, family room, and loft. I know, I know I've been playing "safe" with our colours in the home. And I am not to do any different in these 3 rooms as the colours will be mostly on the fabrics for the cushions and drapes and accent wall. The big pieces are still neutral a.k.a. beige-brown-white-grey-blah. But I think once these pops of colours will be used, it will not be as blah anymore. Let's see.

Updates on some of our latest renos:

• Shelves in our walk-in closet have been installed and I am loving it. I told MDH it feels like I'm shopping for clothes whenever I choose what to wear in the morning :). There are still a few items that we need to finish up like putting the baseboards back, putting up the mirror and wall hooks for my blings, and adding 2 shelves and racks. But overall it's close to being a finished labour-of-love reno ;).

• I found the perfect fireplace for our bedroom and will order it soon. In 2 weeks, we'll re-paint our bedroom with BM Stonington Grey (same paint colour that we used in our walk-in). 

• We've managed to amp-up a bit the coziness in the loft.  Just a tad bit. We removed the work table and the desktop computer as they aren't used since MDH, MDK, and I have each our own workspaces. The study for MDH, the guest-room-slash-mini-recording-studio for MDK, and the chef's desk for moi. The sofa and loveseat that used to be in the family room are now in the loft. MDH says it's a perfect spot for napping so we now call it "the napping station." He's even thinking of replacing the sofa with a sofa-bed. I said "NO" so that's the end of that discussion hahaha.

So how about you my darlings? Any new schemes?

Have a wonderful week ahead.

Today's a fab day...

I had a lovely day today. Firstly, I took a day off from work as we were expecting 2 deliveries, one's a furniture set which I ordered online and the other's a bunch of closet stuff for our walk-in. Secondly, MDK was at home and did a kind deed to the delivery guys.

The furniture pieces are now in our family room and everyone loves it. Even MDK, as usual I must say, was pleasantly surprised that they look quite nice and work well with the rest of our decor. I told him he should learn not to doubt my choices ;).

The next project that we have to tackle will be the walk-in closet. The closet shelves are all dark (similar colour to our ensuite cabs) and the paint, we'll paint it with BM's Stonington Grey. Walk-in reno is now first in MDH's honey-do list. Finally! I will post pics once reno is done, I guess.

For now, I'll share a pic of my lunch.

Lunch was celery sticks (with ranch dressing), grapes, crackers, wensleydale cheese with cranberries, and a glass of milk. To 'balance' it out, I had some leftover macs and would have loved to pair them with Moscato wine but there was none left so MDK and I had them with tea instead.


The macs above are from the last batch I did 2 weeks ago. I set aside a few pieces. MDH had requested that I made a batch for the retirement party of his former boss and mentor (and a very good friend I must add). The serving plates came back empty so I guess that was a good thing. Someone in the party had asked for the recipe. And because today is a fab day, I'm sharing the recipe.

French Macaron Recipe:

120g almond meal
200g powdered sugar
100g egg whites
30-35g granulated sugar
food colouring gel

1. Line rectangular baking sheets with silicone liners (silpat) or parchment paper. For this amount of ingredients, I use 3 baking sheets.

2. Prepare a piping bag with a round tip attached to it. I use #12.

3. Weigh the almond meal and powdered sugar and sift together to remove clumps.

4. Weigh the rest of the ingredients.

5. Beat the egg whites until the mixture becomes foamy. Begin adding the sugar and beat the meringue until it turns to stiff, glossy peaks.

6. Add the food colouring.

7. Then gradually add and fold the almond/sugar mixture.

8. Pour the batter into the piping bag and pipe rows of batter onto the baking sheets. Make sure to leave some space in between to allow the macs to spread.

9. Allow the macs to rest for approximately 30 minutes.

10. Preheat your oven between 275 to 310 degrees F. The 295 F setting in a convection oven works for me. You may have to do a bit of experimenting on this.

11. Bake the cookies for 16-20 minutes.

There is a caveat to the recipe above. The settings that work for me may or may not work for you. Just like most recipes, you may have to tweak this. But I've made this several times now and I've considered my first attempt and the next ones relatively successful. If you are used to baking goods that require meringue, you'll be fine. And just like anything you're set to learn, if and when the first attempt fails, try again until you succeed.

Here's to the New Year

May this year bring me more joy and success and less grief and regret. And if I stumble and fail, may I have the grace and courage to get up, pick up the pieces, and move on.

May I never stop believing in my dreams for myself and for my loved ones. May I take the actions that will make them a reality. May I be able to readily give up any dream that I have that is not my loved one's and make his dream mine as well and support him unconditionally, no matter what.

May I learn to encourage more and criticize less, give more and need less.

May I be kinder to people around me and to myself.

May I always be able to let my loved ones and friends know how much of a blessing they are in my life. And may my presence in their lives be a blessing to them too.


Here's to another beginning. A blessed New Year to one and all!

Ready for the holidays

"Every house where love abides

and friendship is a guest is surely home, 

and home, sweet home; 

for there the heart can rest."

~ Henry Van Dyke

I can't wait for Christmas to come. As a matter of fact, this year's Christmas decors in our home have been put up a day after Halloween. 

I've decided to use red and green as the main colours for the kitchen and the family room. We've also put up four Christmas lanterns (only 3 are shown in the pic below). We got these from Ikea, believe it or not :). And dirt cheap too as we bought them during Boxing Day.

Christmas cooking/baking has also started. Last week, I managed to whip up a few batches of French macarons and brought some to the office. I will be making a few batches this week. Not just macarons but some of our usual Christmas goodies.

MDH and I will be off from work between Christmas and New Year. Big yay to that! Well, not quite "off work" for MDH as he will be working from home. But at least, he can work in his pajamas.

Over 10 days of no set time to sleep and wake-up, possibly pig-out, lotsa cuddles in front of the TV, movie marathon, video chats with family members from afar, and on and on. I can't wait!

Bring it on

I am soooo ready!

These sweet little things ...

For me, one of the happy places to be in is in the kitchen doing one of the exciting things to do - trying out a recipe.

I have, for the longest time, wished to learn to make French macarons. For one, they're one of my favourite photo subjects.  And, not only are they pretty, they're quite delicious too. They may not be for everyone's liking but for someone with sweet tooth, they're to die for. Okay, I'm exaggerating. You get the picture - I have one big crush for these little sweet things hahaha. The problem is, where we are, there is no bakeshop that sells them. Or if there is, I don't know.

So, what does a desperate woman like me do? Scour the internet for the recipe. And take the time to read the comments and reviews of the recipe if there are available.
 
There are quite a number of French macaron recipes (with accompanying tips and tricks) out there. The most common tips I found are:

• Measure the ingredients as accurately as possible. The recipe I picked uses weight (in grams) as measurement (instead of the usual volume in cups and tsps) so I had to buy a small digital weighing scale.
• Make sure that your utensils are clean and oil-free especially the bowl you'll use to prepare your meringue.
• Over beating or under beating of the egg whites will yield undesirable result. This can be a tad tricky for someone who hasn't worked with meringues. But just remember, YouTube university is just a click away ;) .

Okay, so without further ado, up close, here's the result of my first attempt -

My first attempt with French macarons. They're crunchy outside, chewy inside.

Not the perfect macarons as they are way too sweet but I guess they will do for now. I had the most encouraging sidekick a.k.a. MDH who has the greatest trust that I can do it.

For this batch, I used strawberry jam. Even if they're from the same batch, I ended up having two colours. That's because I experimented on the baking time. Some of them are now stored in the fridge as they need to "mature" for best flavour. Apparently, macarons are best when they're not so fresh. I didn't know that.

So in the next few days, during my free time, I will tweak the recipe I used to come up with something less sweet and maintain the same texture. Lots of experimentation (didn't they say 'baking is chemistry'? )  in my favourite lab, our kitchen, in the coming days . Hopefully, I will 'discover' the 'perfect concoction' before the official Christmas baking begins. Yup, I'm planning to include macarons in our Christmas goodies this year.

Another Tale, Another Tear

She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful & life was so short.

~ Story People

Give me the strength to hold back my tears.
~ Me

He gives the bestest gifts

Over umph-teen years of being married to this guy, a gazillion years of having known him and be with him, his gift giving hasn't changed. He knows the bestest gift to give.

The morning of our anniversary, this was how the bedroom of The Boy Who Means The World To Us looked like. This was MDH's anniversary gift to me - repaint of MDK's bedroom.

Less than an hour before we headed to our fave Italian resto for our anniversary dinner, here's what it looked like -

It took awhile for the bedroom occupant to pick a colour. I think it even stressed him out a bit. Ah, boys :). He did ask for some suggestions and so I showed him some of the shades I was leaning towards - something green with a grey undertone, a lighter shade of olive green maybe. He said he liked something with a tint of yellow and anything blueish was not an option.

It was quite interesting when he looked at the swatches. His first batch (yes, batch) of choices were based on names. If it was green and he liked the name, he picked them. It sounded like an easy criteria to pick a colour, but in reality, all the ones with 'cool-sounding' names didn't really look good in the room.

I took this pic against the loft wall. I picked this corner of the loft since this is visible from MDK's bedroom and at certain angles, the 2 colours (red-orange and green) are visible at the same time.

So, after weeks of deliberating which colour to put and with my assurance that it was just a paint and that if he wouldn't like it, we can repaint it, he decided to pick Guilford Green by Benjamin Moore. And when I asked him to confirm that it was his final choice, he said, "I don't even like the name." So Guilford Green it was!

As soon as the first brush stroke was applied on the wall, I was smitten with the colour. Quite soothing to the eyes. Most importantly, it looked clean.

Bedroom layout

And here's a bonus pic - the ensuite. It's the smallest bathroom in the house so it was quite a challenge when we painted it. With the ladder and stuff in it, only one person at a time could work. But it was for The Boy Who Means The World To Us so we didn't mind.

One of them days

 

"The pink lady, is that you?"

"Are you crying in the pic?"

"Is that me?" (pointing to the giant stick man)

Happy Halloween!